The Black Book of Secrets Read Online Free

with more
spoils and received another. After that I returned as often
as I could.
    I don’t know if Mr Jellico made any money. His shop
was rarely busy, the window was dirty and there was never
much on display. Once I saw a loaf of bread on the shelf.
    ‘Young lass,’ said Mr Jellico when I asked him about it.
‘She swapped the bread for a pot so she could boil a ham.
She’ll be back tomorrow with the pot and she’ll take the
bread, a little harder maybe, but it will soften in water.’
    Such were the strange arrangements between pawnbroker
and customer!
    I don’t know why Mr Jellico showed me such kindness,
why he chose to feel sorry for me over the hundreds of
other lads roaming the perilous streets. Whatever the
reason, I wasn’t complaining. I told him what Ma and Pa
were like, how they treated me, how little they cared for
me. Many times when it was too cold to stay out, and I was
too afraid to return home, he let me warm myself by his
fire and gave me tea and bread. He taught me the AlphaBet
and numbers and let me practise writing on the back of old
pawn tickets. He showed me books and made me copy out
page after page until he was satisfied with my handwriting.
It has been remarked that my style is a little formal. I blame
this on the texts from which I learned. Their authors were
of a serious nature, writing of wars and history and great
thinkers. There was little room for humour.
    In return for this learning I carried out certain chores
for Mr Jellico. At first I wrote out the price tags for thewindow, but as my writing improved he let me log
the pledges and monies in his record book. Occasionally the
door would open and we would have a customer. Mr Jellico
enjoyed talking and would detain them in conversation
for quite some time before taking their pledge and paying
them.
    I spent many hours in the back of the shop engaged in
my tasks and Ma and Pa never knew. I saw no reason to tell
them about Mr Jellico; they would only have demanded that
I steal something from him. I had the opportunity, many
times, but although I would not hesitate to cheat my parents
out of a few shillings, I could not betray Mr Jellico.
    I would have gone to him every day if I could, but he
wasn’t always there. The first time I found the shop closed
I thought he must have packed up and left. I was surprised
that he hadn’t said goodbye even though it was the sort of
thing I had come to expect from people. Then a few days
later he came back. He didn’t say where he had been and I
didn’t ask. I was just glad to see him.
    This went on for almost five months until the night I fled
the City. As I lay in the fireplace that first night at Joe Zabbidou’s
I had only one regret, that I had left without sayinggoodbye to Lembart Jellico. There was little chance I would
see him again.
    So, when Joe said that he was a pawnbroker I was
pleased. He seemed different from Mr Jellico and I knew
that Pagus Parvus was nothing like the City, but I felt safe.
I thought I knew what to expect. But of course I didn’t
know then what a Secret Pawnbroker was.

 
    Chapter Six

A Grand Opening
    Pagus Parvus was indeed very different from the City. It was
a small village clinging for its life to the side of a steep
mountain in a country that has changed its name over and
over and in a time that is a distant memory for most. It comprised
one cobbled high street lined on either side with a
mixture of houses and shops built in the style that was popular
around the time of the great fire in the famous city of
London. The first and second floors (and in the case of the
home of wealthy Jeremiah Ratchet, the third and fourth
floors) overhung the pavement. In fact, sometimes the
upper levels stuck so far out that they restricted the sunlight.
The windows themselves were small with leaded
panes, and dark timbers ran in parallel lines on the outsidewalls. The buildings were all at strange and rather worrying
angles, each having slid slightly down the hill over
the